Corporate Brand and Reputation Conference

These are exciting and challenging times for business leaders and brand builders. With digital technology reshaping industries and empowering audiences around the world, companies are scrambling to find new ways to build trust, differentiate their brands and inspire audiences. Gone are the days when advertising alone would do that. Companies today must be strategic storytellers that know how to use data and content to inspire customers, rally employees and position brands for long-term business growth.

At this highly interactive conference, leaders from some of the world’s leading and most interesting companies---including Airbnb, Fidelity Investments, and Lockheed Martin---will share stories and insights that will surprise and inform attendees.

Storytelling for Business: How to Create Narrative that Inspires Action and Changes Behavior

12:00 – 6:00pmHosted at The Conference Board Headquarters

Storytelling for Business

Storytelling is the foundation of human understanding and defines true authenticity. As Aristotle once said, "You don't influence people through intellect, you do it through emotion." A great story IS emotion. It is how to truly build empathy and understanding and is the strongest motivation to action. A great story ensures passion and memorability. It has also been proven to evoke neurological response.

The same principles and insights that make your favorite stories on stage, page and screen can be used to develop strong branded innovations, meaningful consumer experiences, inspiring communications or just a more immersive powerpoint.

This Storytelling presentation and workshop program will cover the foundations and principles of storytelling along with some hands-on story tools and processes to apply to your projects. Beginning with phases of defining and understanding story, we will talk story fundamentals and mythology and explore how story structures and patterns can be used across an infinite array of problems ranging from strategy, branding to overall better communications with important stakeholders. Then we move into stages of creating and delivering your stories in class by leveraging several "Hollywood-esque" tools and approaches to make your stories richer, more focused and engaging.

By learning and leveraging these storytelling principles and methods you will be able to create better product, brand, organization and personal stories.

In the workshop Shane will cover a range of topics - some of these include:

What is Story? - creating an understanding of its meaning and why it works so well

Great Story Basics - what are the "Fab 5" of all great stories

Leveraging Story Structures - understanding narrative structures, their application, development and forms

The Role of Mythology - its role in human, brand and science understanding and communication

The Narrative Recipe - the key ingredients/principles of any good story

The Quest Model - the Hero's Journey and how to use it as a strategy and creative tool

Story Tools and Techniques - using tools like Pitch, Theme, Genre, Meaning and a 3 & 8-Step Story Framework to create your narrative

Benefits of attending:

Better understand the role storytelling plays in both our personal and professional lives

Better coach your teams/management on how to use storytelling to communicate, inspire and develop/implement strategy

Develop a common language to critique stories

Define actionable ideas, story tools and methods to develop a variety of different business narratives

Be able to clearly identify your audiences needs, obstacles and desires in the stories you create

About the Workshop Leader

Shane Meeker has been with Procter & Gamble for 17 years and is the leader of the P&G Heritage & Archives Center where he and his team’s primary responsibilities are to research, collect, preserve and share P&G’s rich, inspirational 175 year history inside and outside the company. For the 15 years prior to this role he was an Associate Director in the P&G Design Function working on billion dollar brands like Tide, Gain, Downy, Olay, Pampers and Dawn. For several years he has also been focused on bringing the ideas, principles and processes of storytelling to life across P&G.

His storytelling work includes helping teams use narrative theory to inspire and develop brand and organizational strategies, innovations and communications. He also leads various story-based workshops to help bring ideas to life.

In addition to his work at P&G, Shane has shared his story principles and workshops at various educational institutions, design agencies, conferences and external companies. Some of the companies he has shared his story work with include Walt Disney, Columbia Sportswear, General Motors, Starwood Hotels and American Express. Shane is also an Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and co-teaches a yearly story-based graduate course called Innovation Narratives. He also co-teaches at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP School of Design in a graduate course called Design Mythography.

These are exciting and challenging times for business leaders and brand builders. With digital technology reshaping industries and empowering audiences around the world, companies are scrambling to find new ways to build trust, differentiate their brands and inspire audiences. Gone are the days when advertising alone would do that. Companies today must be strategic storytellers that know how to use data and content to inspire customers, rally employees and position brands for long-term business growth.

At this highly interactive conference, leaders from some of the world’s leading and most interesting companies---including Airbnb, Fidelity Investments, and Lockheed Martin---will share stories and insights that will surprise and inform attendees.